The Big Top

Author's Note

This poem appears in my writings from

approximately 9th grade, but I have never

been able to validate that I wrote it without

stimulation from some external source. It
does seem to me to be a very sophisticated
approach to the topic for a 9th grader—though I was a decent writer for my age—evidenced by some pretty solid writing from grade 6, about death.

So while I put my name on it now, despite extensive research with no result to find the source, I reserve the right to apologize profusely in the future for basing this on some other writer's work.

(Note I have also updated/improved it in recent years, so the vocabulary is better than it was when originally written.)

The atom is a curious thing:

Around a central nucleus spins

A tiny charged electron moon,

And so the universe begins.

Our Earth wheels round its central pole—

That’s why our sky seems ever spun—

And then it whirls an arc though space

In stately orbit of the sun.

The planets join this circle dance,

In endless pirouette they gyre,

And some bear moons, and some wear rings,

All cycling round one central fire.

Our solar system is a speck

Amidst a swirling mass of light:

The pageant of the Milky Way—

A ballet in eternal night.

Yet that's not all: for without end,

No matter where we aim our sight,

Are galaxies and galaxies

That spiral their celestial light.

With all the universe a-spin,

From mote to moon to stars aloft,

I think it is a wonder we

Don't all get dizzy, and fall off.

Image:

NASA. Pinwheel Galaxy Rainbow . California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 23 May 2012, photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA15630.jpg.